MY NOT-SO-PERFECT, PERFECT CHRISTMAS DAY

Thursday, 28 December 2017

I didn't really think I'd ever been a lover of Christmas Day, especially as I got older. It was only when I had my first Christmas without my mum that I realised, maybe I was. Or maybe I just wanted my mum with me everyday, and Christmas Day was no different. Early in 2017, my mum told me that she would be coming down for Christmas with her husband (she lives around two and a half hours away) and I already knew it would be the best Christmas present I received this year.

Over the past few years, we seem to have made a tradition. Christmas Eve at my sisters, Christmas Day at my god-mum's and Boxing Day at mine. We are not a small family by any stretch of the imagination, I have one of the biggest families I know...I just don't want to spend Christmas with any of them. Me, my mum, my god-mum and my sister are extremely close and Christmas has only ever consisted of our partners and our kids, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

There's such a pressure for Christmas Day to be perfect and you see the same conventional image of a huge family sitting round a table of steaming hot food, adorned with paper hats and smiles. My Christmas day was slightly different. My sister decided to have dinner at her house this year with my niece and nephew, and her fiance. So Christmas day for me was my husband, my mum, her husband and my god-mum. We'd all had a bit to drink before lunch was served...we later realised it wasn't the best idea. In the space of five minutes, my dad had snapped the potato masher in half, resulting in bits of swede covering the kitchen walls and floor; my god-mum dropped the pigs in blankets on the floor, whilst swearing profusely; shouts of, "WE'VE FORGOTTEN THE GRAVY...AND THE YORKSHIRES" could be heard streets away, and then my mum kicked the bin bag over, which led to the floor looking like a dumping site. It was at that point, when I was picking up rotten vegetable peelings off the floor with my mum on Christmas Day, that the kitchen erupted into laughter. Make up was ruined from tear stained faces and it was then that my mum looked at me and said, "isn't this what Christmas is all about?".

At that moment, I could have cried tears of joy for her. Before my mum's new partner, she was sensible, precise, anything less than perfect was not okay; especially on Christmas day. But here was my mum, laying on the floor with me, laughing, picking up bits of Christmas dinner and reassuring me that this is what Christmas is all about.

And it is, isn't it? As long as everyone is smiling and happy, who cares what happens in between? If your tummy is full of food and your heart is full of love - there's nothing else you really need at Christmas.